A Glimpse of Chinese EVs: the dominant power to drive the world into the future of transportation

[FairAndUnbiased]

Can we now finally call the BYD Han EV dead then? It's been on sale since July 2020 and struggles to break 7,000 a month! Sales are flat. It's being completely destroyed by both the Model 3 AND Model Y. There are no signs of a sales breakout...unless the Blade 3.0 somehow nudges people.

This is the China car sales from Jan 1st to September 30th. EV's in BOLD.
View attachment 787707
BYD Han EV 58,251 / 9mo = 6,472/month <- That's HORRIBLE!! This is BYD a big name in electric cars...not some nobody...and this is their top selling EV!! How many years have they been selling EV's in China now??

How much longer does this "engineering marvel" need to prove itself? Another 10 years???

Now keep in mind this is just Tesla's sales in China:
Tesla Model 3 avg = 12,430/mo
Tesla Model Y avg = 10,325/mo

Tesla has sold over 625,000 EVs woldwide in this timeframe.

But unlike Tesla, BYD's commercial vehicle product line isnt vaporware.

 

[letsrock]

I won't disagree with that, in fact that's the key point. Consumerism is not about the tech, not even about quality, it's about marketing. What does a LV bag has? Or a burger? Or a cup of Starbucks? Perceived quality, brand association, packaging, industrial design, etc, are among many elements of marketing, an area that engineering-centric Chinese manufacturers usually overlook. The lack of marketing skills has plagued China not just in EV sector but in many areas, see how poor the SOE market their defence products? Names that can't be remembered, bad PPTs/videos, no stories, even the BGM music never match. Just like today many FMCG marketing professionals were ex-employees of P&G, Coca-Cola, LVMH and such, Tesla will be a major source of talents for Chinese EV manufacturers.

It's China's top-level national strategy to promote EV, aka working against gasoline which has existed for decades, it takes excellent marketing to grow the sector, battle-hardened (vs Detroit, UAW, Wall Street short-sellers) Elon Musk obviosuly has mastered the trade craft. Bringing in Tesla won't destroy China, see how foreign brands reshape US auto industry, China government can only have far weapons in toolbox to steer our industry in the right direction.

Excellent comment. As one chinese govt member said - "china knows how it solve poverty but it still hasnt figured out how to get rich"

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

A single unit of LIDAR costs more than 70,000 USD just a few years ago, and takes lots of space, and now Huawei makes LIDARs just cost hundred USD per unit. Of course Tesla is going to say it is not the expense

He said that way back in April 2019 before Huwei did anything with LIDAR prices so try again with claiming he's backtracking.

 

[Stranagor]

BYD Semiconductor, BYD's chip business, has gained new progress in its China A-share listing, with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx) giving the nod.

BYD said in an announcement Monday that the HKEx has given its consent to spin off its subsidiary BYD Semiconductor to ChiNext and agreed to exempt the company from providing guaranteed quotas to shareholders.


The spin-off will further enhance BYD Semiconductor's multi-channel financing capability and brand effect, and lay a solid foundation for it to become an efficient, smart and integrated new semiconductor supplier, the announcement said.

BYD Semiconductor was established in October 2004, and BYD directly holds 72.3 percent of the shares and is the controlling shareholder of the company. BYD founder Wang Chuanfu indirectly controls BYD Semiconductor through BYD.

BYD announced on June 30 that its application to spin off BYD Semiconductor to ChiNext was accepted by Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

BYD Semiconductor will continue to engage in the R&D, production and sales of power semiconductors, intelligent control ICs, intelligent sensors and optoelectronic semiconductors.

BYD Semiconductor will focus on automotive-grade semiconductors in the future and promote the development of semiconductor businesses in industrial, home appliance, new energy and consumer electronics, and is committed to becoming a new type of efficient, intelligent and integrated semiconductor supplier, the company said.

The process was suspended on August 18 when Beijing Tianyuan Law Firm, which served BYD Semiconductor's IPO process, was investigated by the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

According to a report by yicai.com on September 6, Tianyuan has issued a review report and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange has resumed the review of BYD Semiconductor's offering for listing.


BYD Semiconductor can now move forward with the IPO process and therefore did not change its original law firm, according to the report.

After last year's Series A and Series A+ financing, BYD Semiconductor has completed a total financing of RMB 2.7 billion, and the overall post-investment valuation has reached RMB 10.2 billion.

As of press time, BYD shares traded in Hong Kong rose 3.24 percent to HK$312.6, setting a new record high.

BYD gets HKEx's nod to spin off its semiconductor unit to A-share listing

BYD Semiconductor was established in October 2004, and BYD directly holds 72.3 percent of the shares.

cnevpost.com

 

[Kai Liu]

He said that way back in April 2019 before Huwei did anything with LIDAR prices so try again with claiming he's backtracking.

You just proved my point. At that time LIDAR was still very expensive, but now it becomes as cheap as cabbage, but he did not expect this rapid development or he was lying...and now he has to continue his dinosaur tech which he already input a lot of money into otherwise he will get his own face slapped...lol...Can't blame though, he is just a salesman...

 

[Shotgunner51]

Did you do the battery leasing. i.e. BaaS? Considering the high pricing, I guess no?

I have thought about it but in the end I chose to buy the battery pack, 100 kWh. You wanna get one? Add me so we can split the extra reward points!

 

[GS Zhou]

I have thought about it but in the end I chose to buy the battery pack, 100 kWh. You wanna get one? Add me so we can split the extra reward points!

Haha, you are not the first Nio owner who tries to "lure" me to buy one.

I'm actually considering to buy one EV. As the preparation, last month I paid RMB 140k to buy a parking space in my community, because otherwise the property management (Wuye) won't allow me to install the charger.

But I haven't decided yet which one to buy. My first choice is Nio ET7. I wanna to try its autonomous driving capabilities that enhanced by the adoption of Lidar! But the problem is, my wife doesn't like sedan, she wants SUV. (You know in China, female always owns a much bigger power than male in big decisions. Haha. )

I really hope Nio could soon launch an SUV with lidar!!

等等党永远胜利，哈哈！

 

[Shotgunner51]

Haha, you are not the first Nio owner who tries to "lure" me to buy one.

I'm actually considering to buy one EV. As the preparation, last month I paid RMB 140k to buy a parking space in my community, because otherwise the property management (Wuye) won't allow me to install the charger.

But I haven't decided yet which one to buy. My first choice is Nio ET7. I wanna to try its autonomous driving capabilities that enhanced by the adoption of Lidar! But the problem is, my wife doesn't like sedan, she wants SUV. (You know in China, female always owns a much bigger power than male in big decisions. Haha. )

I really hope Nio could soon launch an SUV with lidar!!

等等党永远胜利，哈哈！

Same here it was my wife who decided to get ES6, men always have no say LOL. You on NIO app? Can add me there, same name "Shotgunner" as here. Your situation is quite common, that's probably what EC6 is meant for: it's neither a sedan nor a traditional-look SUV, it's a bit of both. Well on ET7, I don't know tech or Lidar that much, I just know its Karuun interior is damn sexy!

 

[GS Zhou]

Same here it was my wife who decided to get ES6, men always have no say LOL. You on NIO app? Can add me there, same name "Shotgunner" as here. Your situation is quite common, that's probably what EC6 is meant for: it's neither a sedan nor a traditional-look SUV, it's a bit of both. Well on ET7, I don't know tech or Lidar that much, I just know its Karuun interior is damn sexy!

I've added you on the Nio APP. Please accept it.

 

[mike2000 is back]

BYD is expensive and is not as nice as NIO or similar smaller makers. The reason they are not quite as popular is because their designs are not that nice. NIO and XPeng make good looking cars with well designed interior. BYD seems stuck in 2010s design. NIO's battery changing attracts customers. Other EV makers have certain specialties like it could be design, size, self driving, battery changing, user interface. BYD does nothing too well and charges more even though they are a technology leader but then so is NIO.

BYD makes a lot from selling their battery technologies and other things to other manufacturers but to become more successful in cars, they need to improve design.

Look at Hongqi's new EVs. They are only a little bit more than BYD but designs are more interesting and the whole prestige of the brand for Chinese buyers. Of course people would even prefer Hongqi over BYD

If that's the case, the BYD has been a relative failure in the new car EV industry . Since they had a huge head start over their competitors, and yet they didn't take full advantage of this . In fact, they are lagging behind companies that came behind them just recently. Shows that their policy/designs has indeed been a relative failure to some extent. Since under normal circumstances they should have been the market leaders in CHINA at least and even a world leader by now. I don't think they will be able to achieve that anymore since they haven't been able to do that all this years. More competitors are coming in and those already in are moving ahead even more faster with better designs each year . I guess they will keep playing second fiddle in the background while more cool/innovative car designs companies keep moving on ahead.

 

[Shotgunner51]

I've added you on the Nio APP. Please accept it.

Done ... Welcome NIOer!

 

[nang2]

Excellent comment. As one chinese govt member said - "china knows how it solve poverty but it still hasnt figured out how to get rich"

That is certainly interesting. Solving poverty is fairly easy. You just do whatever most people do. Getting rich means you need to do better than most people.

 

[serenity]

If that's the case, the BYD has been a relative failure in the new car EV industry . Since they had a huge head start over their competitors, and yet they didn't take full advantage of this . In fact, they are lagging behind companies that came behind them just recently. Shows that their policy/designs has indeed been a relative failure to some extent. Since under normal circumstances they should have been the market leaders in CHINA at least and even a world leader by now. I don't think they will be able to achieve that anymore since they haven't been able to do that all this years. More competitors are coming in and those already in are moving ahead even more faster with better designs each year . I guess they will keep playing second fiddle in the background while more cool/innovative car designs companies keep moving on ahead.

I agree. They have much more resources than other newer Chinese competitors but have not translated advantage into greater market share.

They hold one of the three main battery technologies that lead in the battery field (CATL being the one that holds the other two which is best performance and sodium battery) but BYD's blade technology is considered also a great advantage and at least shows that BYD has something to offer this industry that is unique and sought after.

But for EV car sales BYD just really needs to have better managers who understand the whole market and consumers better. Their designs are simply not as good as Xpeng, Hongqi, NIO for middle to high ends and they also seem to not be much better than smaller brands in lower end although it seems this is something they are improving and going to start dominating.

All this is really too early to judge BYD. It's only been around 5 years of really developing and selling EVs. I think we will see BYD take a greater low end market share and beat out more nimble small players but small players will be nimble to fill gaps BYD will be the main one. For mid to high end, they really need to get new designers and UI designers even if they're products are okay and as good as western competitors they are not as good as NIO and XPeng. NIO especially really has the best UI around. No other car maker offered AI assistant that is totally integrated since two years ago. But all these major makers will soon receive internet of things integration with new designs for city traffic management and autonomous driving.

Right now autonomous driving is individual car and not networked and integrated with rest of city and cars on the road, after 2025 there will be much more improvement in this respect since more cars will be EVs and the developers by then will want to work with these makers to integrate everything.

 

[nang2]

Right now autonomous driving is individual car and not networked and integrated with rest of city and cars on the road, after 2025 there will be much more improvement in this respect since more cars will be EVs and the developers by then will want to work with these makers to integrate everything.

I consider networked auto driving is a disadvantage, not an advantage. A car is mostly meant for individuals, not like a bus or a train. Having someone else controlling what is meant just for you is a scary proposition.

 

[serenity]

I consider networked auto driving is a disadvantage, not an advantage. A car is mostly meant for individuals, not like a bus or a train. Having someone else controlling what is meant just for you is a scary proposition.

This is a hard question to answer and a very complicated one.

A car's paradigm will shift with time and technology and the surrounding conditions. We know that cars are rarely used when road availability is limited by infrastructure or traffic conditions. Its use rate also changes according to traffic and speed of transport in the car. Basically in my thesis study, the car use rate is always below availability rate and as road clears and traffic improves through lets say road enlarged or more networks, the car use rate increases to immediately fill. However, even then the use rate is much higher than availability rate.

Many planning departments then considered share use autonomous vehicles being the urban car's future. High density living suits this as car spaces are also a cost on development and recreational space. The whole aim is to move towards better efficiency in space and emissions too as by-product to paradigm shift.

A car will develop within 15 years into two very distinct categories or types, first would be the conventional understanding and second will be like those autonomous minibus that carries 7 people or so that has been used in some cities in China for over 3 years now. This is the second category of future car although the form and use may be slightly more different to these existing autonomous cars.

The point is to solve personal transportation problem for lower wealth people and offer similar utility. Private personal car in conventional form where today's consumer values are still going to be the same will remain as main demanded form as these products continue to be affordable to Chinese middle class but poorer people at the moment have only public transport option or extremely cheap cars or second hand cars which cost in maintenance and repairs. Basically there is a market and there is a planning requirement from urban design and emissions.

Networked autodriving is to bring these two categories together with autonomous bus and every other node status and platform. You may think cars and trains and ferries are separate but to integrate all transport forms and nodes together means being able to vastly improve the efficiency of everyone to the point a day in a major city you end up saving 1 million collective hours. Or so the maths suggest at optimal performance. As in you can calculate the gap between observed current conditions and what is possible to achieve. In sense that no individual requires any wait above let's say arbitrary 10 seconds between nodes and platforms. A person who needs to use his shared auto vehicle to get from his apartment to train station with connection required to go to rural town can do it without waiting for the train and this train and all users requiring a seat on this train is optimized where they arrive together and the entire city's journeys are calculated so that just the right number of people need to arrive at this station without overcrowding it and the system distributes a collective optimal solution to all user.

My language is poor so explain and honestly this requires maybe 50 pages to explain properly but I hope you understand the general idea. It isn't to say all users who need this will overwhelm one service. It is to balance the whole thing and only a properly integrated system provides the foundation for this but the software algorithm solution is the brains and already this is solved in China. Even the computing hardware to run this AI is pretty much ready. What is missing is the implementation of the scale and each node and platform to be upgraded to even be able to take this on. By 2025, more EVs will be used and these OS will be more in trial.

Autonomous driving is already something else making decisions for you. It is scary and the technology is not quite so mature yet but in roads designed for this purpose in urban places, it is actually safer than human driving. The problem is laws are not yet solved how to assign responsibility and moral dilemmas in the programming for example if computer requires a choice between killing passenger or killing pedestrian, how does it choose and how does the society's law determine what is right. But once this technology is extremely mature for typical roads and cities and all situations, it will become much more accepted by the law and consumers. For transport perspective, this is simply how it is going to develop. I think Singapore, parts of China, and parts of California will lead the world in implementing this stuff.